We caught up with Caldonia Walton for World Mental Health Day about Weight/Wait, the dance show she and Katharine Richardson have created. It centres around a young woman called Karen who is at her first counselling session.

Why did you want to make Weight/Wait?

Weight/Wait came from my own experiences and many of my friends of trying to navigate unnecessary and bombarding thought patterns throughout a chaotic London life. It’s had many iterations from a trio to a solo to this duet, and came out of a time when I personally struggled to leave the house because I just couldn’t make a decision so therefore would just stay indoors battling it out with my thoughts. Weight/Wait is a response to this experience that I started making in my living room, through the link of dance and text it hopes to demonstrate the confusing thoughts and feelings you can go through that are hard to put into words. It asks the audience to think about their own mental well-being too and seeks to show hope even when Karen (the main character) feels underwater.

What do you mean by the title, Weight/Wait?

The literal and figurative ‘weight’ of the mind on the body and how your thoughts can make you feel heavy. How those thoughts can make us ‘wait’ and procrastinate as we can’t make a decision.

What have been the most memorable responses to the show?

A lot of tears at Brighton Fringe! We were surprised and touched that the work had spoken truthfully to a lot of people about their own experiences with mental health and well-being or of those of people they know.

Weight/Wait is choreographed by Caldonia Walton and Katharine Richardson, and will be on at Blue Elephant Theatre on Friday 25th October. More information here.